#78: Diary of a Girl Discovering She's Concussed

HUMOR

Did I come home from improv (+ happy hour) last night with a skull-splitting migraine that made me want to hollow out my eye sockets and keep drilling until I’d make a better window than door? Yes :)

And had I left the newsletter unfinished and unscheduled before I left for improv? Yes :)

So am I now, hours past the normal send time, finishing the newsletter with this grovely note? Yes again :)

Please forgive. <3

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This post is the final installment of a three-part series. Find the first two parts here: #76: Diary of a Cursed First-Time Surfer Girl and #77: Diary of a Girl Who Doesn’t Know She’s Concussed.

Sunday 9:47am

I wake up and my skull feels snug. The blinds are drawn, and it’s impossibly bright. This must be a migraine, but I don’t usually wake up with them. What a fun twist! Life is an adventure! I chug the water on my bedside table, except I don’t have a bedside table. It’s my violin case from high school, piled with water cups, books, earplugs, loose Excedrin, and a teetering desk lamp. I pop two extra strength and smoosh a pillow over my face. A centimeter separates me from suffocation. When I’m in pain, I revert to the metric system.

Sunday 11:13am

I can’t tell if I actually slept more or if I was just half-conscious stewing in my little pain cave. The medicine has done me the chivalrous courtesy of absolutely nothing. It’s a fun little game we play where I expect it to do what’s promised, and it doesn’t, but I keep trying, and still, it doesn’t. I need more water but my glass has already been chugged so it’s time to emerge from the bedroom.

Sunday 1:01pm

Moving across the country 74 (three) times in six months (four years) means I have a lot of friends in different places (brag) so Sundays are often FaceTime days.

On this particular Sunday, I have a call scheduled with my sweet DC friend Eleanor. It’s a catch-up call. We’re overdue. We chat and chat and laugh and laugh and I feel weeeeeeeird. Nothing I’m saying is making sense and I’m pausing for way too long and this sweet beautiful angel of an Eleanor must think LA has fully knocked me off my rocker. (She didn’t. I anxiously texted afterward to make sure. Being my friend is soooo chill and fun and low-low-low maintenance.)

Something was definitely off, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I felt, throughout the conversation, that the answer was right on the tip of my tongue. But my tongue had become the-world’s-largest-waterslide-long. All I could do was let the words tumble down it, too slippery to fully grasp.

Sunday 4:03pm

Another FaceTime! This one impromptu, from one of my dearest college friends, Dilys. It was one of those classic, milestone calls. I answer the phone to her gorgeous smiling face, hand up, ring finger to camera, rock on full display. And I say something like, You look so beautiful!

…THIS IS THE ‘I JUST GOT ENGAGED’ CALL, YOU SILLY FREAKING GOOSE! THE RING IS RIGHT THERE! LOOK AT THE RING, GOOSE! ACKNOWLEDGE THE RING! THE RING, GOOSE, THE RING!

The girl calling me a goose was somewhere in the back of my head. Or maybe she was the lifeguard on bottom-of-the-tongue-slide duty. You know, the one who wades around in that pool at the bottom and tries to untangle kids if they’re sent down too quickly after each other. Wherever she was, she knew this was the famous, the honorable, the ecstatic engagement call a full minute before I did.

Finally, I processed the ring. OHMYGODCONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!

Sunday 6:11pm

Family FaceTime time! These people have the most experience with me being weird and not making sense for no apparent reason. A breeze. Probably. I don’t remember.

Monday

Monday is a lost day. I think I slept and tried to watch Sex Education. But I’d had this “migraine” for two full days, a concerning run for me. I was slowly, so soooooooo slowly, starting to piece together that maybe something wasn’t quite right. Adam said, I think you’re concussed. I called my mom, Yeah, babe, it sounds like you’re concussed.

Tuesday

The headache gods still have their grimy paws wrapped around my skull, snug as a slug in a pug. My therapist says, You are concussed.

I, incapable of rational thought, decide this is a good time to figure out my new big girl insurance and establish a primary care doctor here in LA. I google, find an office, check my insurance, and book an appointment for Thursday. I try to do some editing for work, but I have to read every paragraph six times. Eventually, I give up. I’ll be replaced by robots in a few years anyway. This blog can be late.

Wednesday

Pretty sure Wednesday didn’t happen? Think we all collectively skipped this one. But my head still hurt.

Thursday 8:49am

I am 11 minutes early for my appointment at UCLA Health, but I’ve already finished all my paperwork online. Crushing it! The receptionist asks for my insurance card. I give it to her. She clicks and types a bit. Oh, it looks like you uploaded your insurance information online and it’s been approved, she says. They’d already called to confirm my insurance since I was being established as a new patient. Easy peasy. The doctor will see you shortly.

Thursday 9:08am

The doc walks in. She’s young and friendly. We talk about my surf lesson and symptoms. She stares at me intently while I talk. I feel heard and genuinely cared for. I think, wow, this is the best primary care visit I’ve ever had. I’m actually excited to be a patient here.

Doc shows me a chart of concussion diagnosis protocol. My symptoms, particularly the two pukes, put me right on the edge of mild and moderate. She thinks I need to get an emergency CT scan, just to be safe. And, she hesitates here, clearly trying to summon some tact. Have I always had that…um…asymmetry of the mouth?

For those of you who haven’t been graced with looking at my beautiful face, I have a crooked smile. Always have, always will. Well, apparently it can be indicative of neurological damage. Cute!

Thursday 9:36am

I’m checking out. I have to walk to the hospital right away to get my CT. And the doctor said the receptionist would print out my doctor’s note saying I am officially concussed and am to avoid screen time for two full weeks. (As an elder Gen Z, this is basically a death sentence, but somehow I will prevail.)

The receptionist smiles at me and says I’m good to go. I have not paid my copay or received my doctor’s note or been given the paperwork to present at my CT. I start to politely protest when the office manager materializes and graciously says she’ll take things from here.

She asks for my insurance card to expedite ordering the emergency CT. I hand it to her. Immediately her face darkens. She scuttles into a back room and shows the card to a colleague, he peers out at me through the crack in the door, then looks back to her and shakes his head.

The office manager returns, apologetic. I’m so sorry, she says, but we made a mistake. Your insurance (ANTHEM BLUE CROSS BLUE SHILED, LET THE MOTHER FREAKING RECORD SHOW) isn’t accepted here. We should’ve caught this. You never should have been able to see the doctor today. I’m sorry.

I, a concussed 26-year-old infant child, am dumbfounded, naive, and stupidly hopeful. This is their mistake. She just said that plain as day in front of all of these witnesses. They’ll take care of it.

Okay, I said, so what does that mean? What do I need to do? She tells me to go sit in the waiting room and call my insurance company. So I do.

I’m on the phone with Anthem for 47 minutes in the UCLA Health waiting room. I am being exceedingly polite (something I strive for in all customer service interactions), but the woman on the other line fucking hates me. I am so stupid to her. I keep gently reminding her that she’s right, I am stupid, because I’m concussed and at this very moment should be in a big tube getting my brain scanned so we can determine just how stupid I am.

Turns out HMO plans are highly restrictive AND someone on the backend (where is this infamous backend and why is there no one ever there to answer for it? Emerge to the front, backend people!) changed my care group without updating my online profile, so the doctors I thought were in network are actually out of network as of, literally, this very week. (If you’re new to an HMO plan and do not immediately establish care within your assigned group, they can switch your group and that notification is sometimes delayed. Just so you know.)

Once we (the woman who hated me) figured this out, she started hating me a little bit less. Because while I am stupid, this particular issue wasn’t my stupidity’s fault. I start to cry as she tells me this was their mistake, but there’s nothing she can do about it. I’ll have to pay out of pocket for the appointment.

I keep crying, but I don’t know exactly why I’m crying, so I start laughing. I’m laughing and crying and repeating, sorry I don’t know why I’m crying! hahaha! thank you so much for your help, hahah! it’s been a tough week ha! (Just a quick reminder for you, dear reader, that I’m still in the waiting room of this primary care physician.)

I go back up to the counter and explain what Anthem said to the office manager. She tells me to take a deep breath and I start cry-laughing again. She has gentle eyes and assures me she’ll work out a discounted rate with the doctor. I thank her profusely and check my email for the new ER I have to walk to to get this emergency CT.

Thursday 1:17pm

I’m in the Providence ER, sitting in a room across from the nurses’ station. The doctor who’s been helping me came in over two hours late today and all the nurses have been talking shit about her since I arrived. It’s a revolving door of shit-talking this doctor.

Oh, and one of the two male nurses keeps trying to bring up the nurse fantasy football league, but everyone else is brushing him off because two hours is an unacceptable amount of time to be late. Honestly, the doctor’s hair didn’t even look brushed so I’m kind of with them. She needs to get her shit together.

Thursday 3:04pm

I’ve been waiting for my CT results for two hours. I understand it’s an ER and I’m not really in a state of emergency at this point, so I haven’t asked for an update. I’m just sitting in my chair, eavesdropping on the nurses since I can’t look at my phone. Finally, the doctor walks by. She does a double take. Why are you still here?

Her tone is oddly accusatory. I’m not sure how to respond. Am I supposed to be somewhere else?

She rolls her eyes. You’re free to go.

Obviously, this is the first I’m hearing of my freedom. Did my CT results come back?

Yeah, they’re clear. She walks away.

Friday 11:32am

I get a bill for $847 for my 30-minute primary care appointment yesterday. That’s right. The office visit. Not the emergency CT scan. I sob.

I send a polite email asking if this is the discounted rate. The office manager, no longer so gentle and kind, replies, I don’t know. Take it up with billing. I’m not supposed to be checking email or googling how to call billing. But I call billing anyway.

They say they can lower it to $500. I sob. The woman takes pity on me. She says, You can negotiate this price. You just have to know what to ask for. Look it up and call me back. Nancy, an angel.

I spend two hours researching the No Surprises Act, negotiating medical bills, and UCLA Health pricing. Turns out the standard price for the way my appointment was coded is $152. They charged me $695 more than that and refused to provide an itemized receipt until the bill was paid in full (illegal) AFTER promising me a discount for their mistake.

I call back. Nancy, my billing angel, tells me she’s spoken to her manager, and after I ask for the $152 price, she’s able to knock it down to $122. I take the win and pay it over the phone.

In conclusion, being concussed sucks, even if your CT is clear, and American healthcare is a scam. :)

Sorry we got a little ~ political ~ there at the end. Navigating insurance is a nightmare! Navigating insurance with a concussion is a living hell! But please know, you can advocate for yourself. If I can do it concussed, you can do it literally whenever. And I’m better now, despite still reigning as the headache queen.

ily bye,

Ariana